Samuel Johnson Quotes

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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

Samuel Johnson
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Samuel Johnson
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Samuel Johnson
Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.

Samuel Johnson
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Samuel Johnson
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

Samuel Johnson
As every writer has his use, every writer ought to have his patrons; and since no man, however high he may now stand, can be certain that he shall not be soon thrown down from his elevation by criticism or caprice, the common interest of learning requires that her sons should cease from intestine hostilities, and, instead of sacrificing each other to malice and contempt, endeavour to avert persecution from the meanest of their fraternity.

Samuel Johnson
Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.

Samuel Johnson
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.

Samuel Johnson
People seldom read a book which is given to them; and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.

Samuel Johnson
As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.

Samuel Johnson
In misery's darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh
Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retir'd to die.

Samuel Johnson
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.

Samuel Johnson
It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.

Samuel Johnson
If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honor.

Samuel Johnson
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Samuel Johnson
Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.

Samuel Johnson
A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.

Samuel Johnson
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Samuel Johnson
They whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those who persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what they have promised.

Samuel Johnson
To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

Samuel Johnson
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

Samuel Johnson
Knowledge is praised and desired by multitudes whom her charms could never rouse from the couch of sloth; whom the faintest invitation of pleasure draws away from their studies; to whom any other method of wearing the day is more eligible than the use of books, and who are more easily engaged by any conversation than such as may rectify their notions or enlarge their comprehension.

Samuel Johnson
The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it.

Samuel Johnson